Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for providing communication services and more particularly to providing IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services on an evolutionary network that may not initially consist of or provide IMS.
Telco operators or service providers in general in various mobile/wireless, fixed and broadband sectors are confronted with new challenges that threaten traditional sources of revenue. For example, revenues from voice services are declining; investments for new network infrastructure and licenses (e.g. 3G and beyond) must be recouped, new competitors from many spaces previously unrelated to telephone services are entering with disrupting technologies or business models, technology and market evolution forces new endless investments and need for new services with the latest capabilities or specifications including convergence across mobile, fixed and broadband (e.g. cable), etc. Service providers are therefore looking for ways to deploy and manage services faster and at lower cost (i.e. compete at Internet speed).
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) defined the concepts of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) as a packet-based network able to provide telecommunication services to users and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent of the underlying transport-related technologies. It enables access for users to networks and to competing service providers and services of their choice. It supports generalized mobility which will allow consistent and ubiquitous provision of services to users.
The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a particular example of an NGN. The IMS represents Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) efforts to define an all IP-based wireless network as compared to the historically disparate voice, data, signaling, and control network elements. Extensions have been developed by other standard bodies like ITU, PacketCable and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Telecommunications and Internet converged Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking (TISPAN), and a few other groups. IMS specifies a particular IP-network deployment/architecture to implement IP/multimedia services able to satisfy the requirements of telco service providers in terms of security, charging, regulatory requirements, quality of service (QoS), etc to support the development on IP-networks of traditional telco services (e.g. Telephony) and interwork in a straight-forward standard way with 1N/PSTN etc. As a result, IMS provides rich policy management that allows for differentiated Quality of Service (QoS) and/or Service Level Agreements (SLAs), differentiates service providers, virtual service providers, and other internet providers running in the network, and provides high quality multimedia services. IMS also supports Telco IP/Multimedia services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), presence, Instant Messaging (IM), video, broadcast, streaming, and Push-To-Talk (PTT). IMS was expected to drive industry adoption of a standardized, network agnostic, end to end IP architecture to speed time-to-market, reduce costs, compete effectively with new generation players like internet players entering the communications space. IMS was further expected to standardize an end to end IP architecture, ease deployment, provide greater interoperability, and provide a base for convergence.
However, the experience today is that the IMS architecture is complicated, demanding, and relatively inflexible and deployments are long and costly. In general, IMS is a silo investment. Further, IMS is a hard coded end-to-end architecture that does not detail how to ensure integrity of functionality or interoperability on partial IMS deployments. Therefore, a full IMS deployment is typically required. However, the cost, complexity and implications of full IMS deployment can be enormous without an incremental roadmap and the value (technical, interoperability-wise, business-wise, etc.) and market for IMS are unproven and un-validated today. A further complication is that there is not just one IMS specification or architecture but many variations which are not always fully interoperable. These multiple IMS specifications present interoperability challenges. Therefore, contrary to expectations, IMS interoperability across infrastructure vendors is not immediate. Interworking is in fact often challenging. Furthermore, services for IMS can't be provided for the majority of the subscribers on legacy networks. However, various Internet applications can be deployed on legacy IP network to provide similar services and compete efficiently against IMS since they can be deployed without the cost and other issues associated with a full IMS deployment. Other well-known and lesser-known issues also have hindered the adoption of IMS. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for providing IMS services, for example, in an evolutionary or ad hoc basis and on a network that may not initially consist of or provide IMS services.